There is no use trying,” said Alice. “One can’t believe impossible things.”
Lewis Carroll “Alice in Wonderland”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
There was this one time our company was dead. I mean it without hyperbole: finished. The latest parts we had built weren’t working; worse than that, they would work for a while and then they would burn out. We hoped to be a supplier into the consumer electronics market; making devices that short out is not a winning strategy. The complicating factor was that this was a brand new failure mode; we had never seen it before, and could not replicate it easily. The previous version of the parts had been built and tested enough that we developed a new, better, version that would combine everything we knew into our best possible device using most of our precious cash in the process. We were so confident in the outcome we couldn’t go back to our old imperfect version—we had “burned the boats” and could not retreat. The result was we were now dangerously low on cash, with no working parts and despite all our late nights and experiments, absolutely no understanding of what was wrong. This had been going on for weeks. We were well and truly dead.
I didn’t have to say this out loud—we all knew it was over. We didn’t need to see the beeping of heart monitors or hear the hiss of forced air in breathing tubes to realize we were on life support. Nothing we were doing was working, and the subcutaneous panic setting in was sapping all our remaining energy. The terrible thing on top of it was that most of the effort to find a fix was down to one person, our lead designer Marco.
Marco is an engineer’s engineer. Pragmatic to a fault; he measures twice and cuts only once. Marco does not know if his glass is half full or half empty; he will instead ask for the density of the liquid in the glass and then tell you its exact volume in your preferred unit of measure. Marco is not prone to sentiment.
The stress on Marco at this time was such though that from my desk I could hear him cursing in the lab nearby. I knew he was working on the problem and I knew we had all but determined an answer was impossible. So, I went to the lab, scooted over a stool and sat next to him at the bench while he picked up the parts one at a time, squinting at them through the eyepiece of a microscope. I’d seen so many pictures of the fried results that I knew what he was seeing and it was death-bed depressing. I started talking.
Hey, Marco. It’s okay. We’ll be okay. Put them down. Look at me… I want you to trust me for just a moment, okay? Just listen to me. Will you close your eyes? Good. Thank you. Keep them shut. Now, I want you to think of a happy, safe, relaxing place. You are there in that place right now, Marco.
I said more than this, a lot more but it was all gentle patter aimed at reducing some of the strain and giving him a little space to think. While I was talking, babbling really, Marco’s eyes stayed closed. I saw his shoulders ease, his hands resting on his lap and his breathing even, comfortable. The fact that he trusted me enough to go along with this was an honor. We had tried everything else, right?
Stay with me, Marco… stay in the place too. Stay there and be content. Now, I want you to imagine that the reason that you’re there is to celebrate. There’s a cold beer in your hand, and it tastes good. You’re drinking the beer and toasting success. Pick a feeling for success… now hold onto that feeling, and the beer and the place… You feel so good there because you solved our problem. You found the root cause and fixed it. Remember that feeling? Remember the fix? You know the answer. Remember the answer, Marco.
Wonderfully, a smile teased around the edges of Marco’s mouth. Perhaps it’s because he thought the exercise was ridiculous or perhaps in his mind he was stretched out in a lounge chair on a beach, Corona in hand. However, he was relaxed and smiling and maybe, if only for a moment, my little talk bled off some of the pressure.
You know the answer, Marco! Problem solved. Now finish the last of your beer and open your eyes.
Marco opened his eyes, and the smile faded; his shoulders tensed back up into a fighting stance. We were back to reality, and playtime was over. Our impossible was still impossible.
“Now, quickly Marco,” I said. “Quickly, without thinking! Tell me what you remembered. What’s the answer?”
At this, I may have made a mistake because he looked angry and he started yelling. “The hell with it… I. DO. NOT. KNOW.” He punched his thigh with a fist, emphasizing each word. “IT’S THE DAMN PLASTIC. There. Happy?” He turned back to the microscope, dismissing me.
Leaning near his ear, not too close, I said, “Look at the plastic.” I left and went back to my desk.
Sometimes I think my job is to show up at meetings and help others to remember what they already know. The more impossible the problem the more we need to remind the people we work with of their birthright: they are the answer. Too often, we forget that we are the fix. Instead we walk away sadly, all the poorer, while abundance is staring us right in the face. Remembering that the solution is “us” does not require we believe in impossible things; it simply requires confidence in our proven ability to deliver impossible answers. Pablo Picasso said it this way: “to draw, you must close your eyes and sing.” Marco closed his eyes and sang in the lab that day. I wish you could have heard the aria, it was beautiful.
As for the death of the company? Soon after our session in the lab, Marco fixed the problem and we went on to further success.
It was the plastic.